In my own words

The theory: If you keep adding small amounts of food to your fire (the fire being your metabolism), you will keep it going strong and burn more calories overall.

The reality: Food intake has a negligible effect on metabolism. Some foods, including those with caffeine, may slightly and temporarily increase metabolism, but the effect is too small to help you lose weight. What most affects your basal metabolic rate (BMR), the rate at which your body burns calories at rest, is body composition and size. More muscles and bigger bodies generally burn more calories overall.

Your best bet for sustained fat loss is to build muscles.

There are other benefits to eating 5-6 micro meals such as preventing binge eating and leveling blood glucose in those who have issues with BG levels. However in my experience both of those may be affected through providing balanced, varied, high quality nutrition.

Typically if we have "cravings" we are either not meeting appropriate macro or micronutrients in our dietary intake.

Choose the right plan for you. Remember a successful plan is a sustainable plan.

Overall to lose weight you need to be in slight deficit. To gain muscle you need to be in slight surplus AND train hard enough.